![]() ![]() Then the fire department comes out to look at what you’re doing, and they have a long list of safety criteria to meet, too. They want to see your licensing, a list of materials, the number of people working on each shot, the distance they will each be from the explosive, the number of fire extinguishers available on set. “They want your resume, the resumes of everyone participating. “The insurance companies want to know everything,” Elliott says. And that meant dancing to the insurance industry’s tune. ![]() Soon, getting affordable rates to underwrite shoots became a basic part of the movie-making business. Afterward, the industry’s commitment to improving safety, along with increasing budgets, made Hollywood a better risk. Before The Twilight Zone, insurance companies didn’t view the movie business as a source of profit: Given how unsafe film sets were, the likelihood of a payout was just too high. The insurance industry made sure that safety provisions stuck. (The guidelines have been updated over the years and are now digitized-the current versions can be found here.) The studios then issued a manual to their employees based on the bulletins, known as the Injury and Illness Prevention Program. “The committee had to parse words like ‘would, shall, and must’ because of the possibility of negligence lawsuits overtaking Hollywood if they were too strict in the wording.” The committee’s codicils were collected into a group of standards called Safety Bulletins. “It was like lawmaking,” says Chris Palmer, a risk-management consultant who was part of the committee. All the unions and guilds in the business were represented. Silvia convened a committee that created standards for every aspect of filmmaking, from gunfire to fixed-wing aircraft to smoke and pyrotechnics. At Warner Bros., a behind-the-scenes revolution was set in motion, as a vice president named John Silvia was determined to tighten up the industry’s approach to safety. ![]() Terrible as the Twilight Zone accident was, some good did come of it. Landis and his co-defendants were acquitted of serious charges, and the director went on to make Coming to America, a hit that put the tragedy in his rearview mirror. Despite an emotional bit of prosecution by Deputy District Attorney Lee D’Agostino-she theatrically offered Landis tissues after he teared up during his testimony, hissed “murderer” at him in full view of reporters when he happened to walk past outside the courtroom, and summed up her case by booming, “It isn’t that John Landis decided to violate the law, it’s that he thinks he’s above it!”-she failed to win a conviction. After three years of legal wrangling, the suit finally went to trial in L.A. The defendants freely admitted that the production broke child labor laws, but they maintained that the crash was an unavoidable accident. Civil suits against the studio and Landis were settled, but Warner Bros., Landis, Wingo, and three others couldn’t avoid criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter stemming from the tragedy. ![]()
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